The Power of the Heart: Finding Your True Purpose in Life (25 page)

I’ve found in my work that when people feel freer to be themselves, to do what really brings them the greatest peace of mind, then, in fact, it literally registers in their bodies in a way that makes them healthier. I experience that so frequently in working with cancer, specifically where people would truly now reorient their lives to what it is that was most important, and then take the personal responsibility to make sure they were doing things that brought them joy on a daily basis. Make sure also that you’re paying attention to the food you’re eating, what you’re putting in your body, and that you’re keeping your body fit.

By reestablishing communication with your heart and focusing on the intentions of your soul, you can restore a balance of mind and body and become healthier.

Dean Shrock

 JOE DISPENZA

Those elevated emotions begin to generate energy in the heart. The heart begins to get a very strong signal and our field begins to expand. We become less material, we become more energetic, and we feel connected to something greater. This is the moment where we’re no longer trying to control the outcome, living by those hormones of stress.

Here, Deepak talks about a simple contemplation that can help your heart.

 DEEPAK CHOPRA

“Contemplation” means that you hold the idea in your consciousness while at the same time putting attention to your heart. When you put your attention on the heart and even think these words, you contemplate on joy, on peace, on happiness, on compassion. Whether it’s on peace, or harmony, or laughter, or love, or joy, or compassion, or kindness—then your heart is structurally different. It shifts.

It is worth remembering that emotions are faster and far more potent than thoughts, which means that positive emotions have a much greater impact than positive thoughts. No matter how hard you try to lift your spirits by thinking about positive things, your thoughts
will ultimately be overtaken by your emotions. Positive thinking is still useful, but positive impulses from your heart will do a great deal more to improve your health.

ROLLIN McCRATY

As we learn how to tap into our heart’s intelligence, it increases our vitality, our resilience, and especially our health and happiness. From my perspective, people who are depressed are really cut off from what we call the heart’s intelligence. Because it’s really the heart intelligence that creates more positive experience and feelings in our life. So if we choose not to follow that, then the heart intelligence withdraws and that leads to depression.

When you are frightened, angry, or frustrated, your body produces less “vitality” hormone and more of the hormones associated with stress. If you have a great deal of stress in your life and you close your eyes to its causes and effects, you will find it difficult to connect with your heart, and it will be difficult to generate positive emotions that can help you get rid of stress.

But when you connect with your heart, with the power of love, heart coherence results, which alleviates stress. As a result, a hormone called DHEA is also produced in your body. This hormone helps to keep us younger. As Howard Martin notes, this vitality hormone generally is referred to as the antiaging hormone.

 ECKHART TOLLE

Watch out for any signs of stress arising. It’s a sign that you have lost connectedness with the heart, because as long as you’re connected with the heart, there is a power, but there is no stress. There is a joy and there is an effectiveness, but no anxiety.

A loving heart in a loving body produces more DHEA (vitality hormone) and fewer stress hormones. It also produces important immune boosters that protect against infections. And, when you open your heart, you tap into positive emotions that positively influence your state of mind as well as your body.

Finally, and perhaps most important, our heart also reaches out to others. The Institute of HeartMath found that the heart has an electromagnetic field around it that is 5,000 times more powerful than the electromagnetic field around the brain. They can actually measure the field of the heart eight to ten feet away from our bodies. This field is communicating the energy of our emotions. It is both absorbing and projecting the energy of love.

 MARCI SHIMOFF

Your heart carries emotional information that people around you can feel and can sense. In fact, your heartbeat affects the heartbeats of the people around you.

You can draw nourishment from other people’s love and affection, especially at moments when you struggle to generate such positive emotions
yourself. As soon as you feel a connection with others, your state of mind can improve.

 DEEPAK CHOPRA

The more we are feeling a sense of connection with sentient beings and life on the planet as part of the ecosystem, the healthier your heart will be. In fact, now there are studies that the number one risk factor for premature death from cardiovascular disease is hostility and resentment—what is called “cynical mistrust.”

 DEAN SHROCK

One of the things that fascinated me and surprised me in my work as director of Mind-Body Medicine for [cancer] centers was the realization that—while we were encouraging people to develop the will to live, they found it too selfish. They believed that everyone and everything else should come first. And so, when I wrote up my research—because my patients were living longer—I had to conclude it was not the will to live, but that it was because they felt loved and cared for. That made the difference. When I asked these patients, as I would move from center to center, “What helped you and what didn’t?” what absolutely surprised me was not any specific coping skill I taught them that helped, but that they said it was because I listened, I cared, and I was sincere. Dr. James Lynch’s research and Dr. Dean Ornish’s research also were very clear that feeling
heard and understood and loved and cared for literally led to an improvement with heart disease.

Co-creator Rollin McCraty tells a story of newborn twins to illustrate our energetic connectedness with others. Shortly after their births in 1995, twin sisters were put into separate incubators, a normal procedure at the time. But one baby’s heart rate was erratic and she was agitated and crying, unable to calm down or be comforted. A nurse decided to put the twins together in the same incubator. The calmer baby instinctively put her arm around her sister, who improved almost instantly. She stopped crying and her heartbeat and breathing stabilized.